


all these happinesses

by anotherbuskitten



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Non-Canon Patronus Forms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 07:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20756984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherbuskitten/pseuds/anotherbuskitten
Summary: Four boys. One memory.





	all these happinesses

[Potter]

Being happy comes easy to James, always has, in a way that even he knows it doesn’t to his best friends. They’re all too worried, or scared, or self-hating to live in the moment. James loves the moment.

But that sort of general happiness that warms him every day won’t do for this spell. A patronus should be from the happiest memory available.

But he’s got so _many_. Almost any moment plucked from his childhood would do. Then there’s Hogwarts. His friends. The best people in the world.

Pranks and studying and endless nights. Remus.

The teacher calls for people to be ready to cast – he’s wasted so much time already but he knows what to pick from; those brief, fleeting, endless nights where he’s in his purest form with his best friends by his side.

He’s running, and he’s casting and…

[Pettigrew]

Peter’s always felt a little less than his friends, a little weaker, a little more likely to fall. He knows he isn’t part of what draws them together.

He isn’t James, who’s like sunshine to the rest of them, how they circle him.

He doesn’t have Sirius’ rage and charisma, ability to barrel into a group and make them love him.

And he doesn’t have a tragedy to his name, like Remus, that people can rally around.

But he has them, the three of them. And more he has the information that will mean they can’t ever leave him – they broke the law for Remus’ tragedy, and Remus can leave (but he won’t not ever, Peter knows), but James and Sirius can never leave Peter alone.

He smiles…

[Black]

Sirius can’t think straight at the moment. Knowledge and worry about his brother too consistent a shadow to bother with being happy. There’s things – bits and pieces and moments scattered across his mind but they’re only threads, with everything coming back to the war. To his place in it, and to his brother’s – at the other side of a battlefield.

What does he have to him that can overpower Voldemort? Bloody nothing, that’s what.

But that’s not true, and what’s more he knows it. He’s got the other marauders – they’re a team, the four of them: unbreakable.

He’s got brothers right here. And they mean it too – blood is an accident that forces you into a family, but these three boys are his because they want it. They want it. They want it. He’s got in home in between them, always will.

What could be better? What could be happier…

[Lupin]

Remus has known what memory he’d be using since he first heard about patronuses. It isn’t that he’s unhappy; not yet anyway in the sanctity of Hogwarts, once he leaves he’s terrified, but that hasn’t happened yet, he’s safe, he’s fine, there’ll be a life for him somewhere.

Most of his memories, happy or otherwise, are tempered by similar feelings of fear or pain or anger or grief. Even this, now, he’s worried about the inevitable wolf jumping out of his wand.

But there was that day, that wonderful day where he found out that his friends would be there forever. He could remember it so clearly; the shock and joy of seeing just what they’d done for him.

Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs.

He straightens up and starts the spell.

And there – a giant, beautiful Gryffindor lion surrounded by three wolves. Remus can’t help it – he laughs.

The lion roars. He’s home.


End file.
